Bradley Kuhn from the Free Software Foundation says "grassroots fundraising in recognition of valuable support, bug fixes and other contributions should be another important staple to the long-term viability of the free software movement and Affero is a platform that can help facilitate it."

What is the Affero Project?

Affero's software project was created to facilitate funding
for Free Software and Open Source
projects and to facilitate more effective dialogue among groups. For details on the roots of the project, read the Poole View. To see current community standings, visit affero.net.

The project has been built using
PHP
, PostgreSQL
, and
Smarty
, and can be found running on
Apache
and GNU
/Linux
at affero.net
Various individuals who host bulletin boards, forums and mailing lists have begun to integrate the service into their communities. Also, some individuals have expressed interest in using affero's rating and payment service in blogs and bug reporting systems. To learn more about integrating Affero into your community, join the affero-links mailing list to stay current on these developments.

Affero combines a peer based reputation system with a commerce system.
It enables individuals to rate other individuals
and make payments on their behalf. The rating system could be compared to the karma system provided
on slashdot, although all member have equal access to rate others.
Basically, any person can rate another person's contribution.

Also, the system doesn't come bundled with any particular forum or community platform, so any independent community host can integrate the services and individuals can share reputation across various communities.

For the Quick Tour and other demonstrations on how individuals experience using affero, go
here